


Three Hour Tour

by Gammarad



Category: The Luminous Dead - Caitlin Starling
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Caves, F/F, Gen, Post-Canon, Rescue Missions, Tourism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:54:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27198097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad
Summary: Gyre and Em have left Cassandra-V behind to be tourists on a very different world. They hear about an emergency, a girl stuck in a cave. It'll be days until she gets help... unless Gyre wants to come to her rescue.
Relationships: Em Arasgain/Gyre Price
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6
Collections: Fic In A Box





	Three Hour Tour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [anticyclone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/anticyclone/gifts).



"It's a cave tour," Em said before breakfast. "Let's do it."

She couldn't be serious. Without even having put her prosthetic on yet, Gyre wasn't ready to fight. That could be why Em was bringing it up now. Gyre felt tension grow at her temples, in her upper lip. "We're only here for two more days, and you want to waste our time with a _cave tour_?"

Estel Six was lovely. They'd been to zoos and arboretums and seen a musical production put on live. They'd eaten a lot of different sorts of expensive food, some of which had even tasted good. There was still plenty to do that wasn't - 

"You like caves," Em pointed out. 

"Used to like."

"Fine. Used to like. But look at this." 

Gyre conceded a glance at the advertisement. The cave looked nothing like the ones back -- home? Where they used to live, anyway. Cassandra-V. That place, filled with memories she didn't want to revisit. Maybe she could replace them with the caves in the pictures, with their different kind of stone, worn with different impurities in the water, with not a fungus to be seen. Electric lights everywhere. Suspended walkways with safety ropes and lifts.

"You spent all that time in them when you were young, and this isn't dangerous. It's a public tour. Pay fifty credits to follow a guide along a tourist route to look at pretty rocks for three hours. Come on, they have safety ropes. And _lifts_."

Gyre scowled. She wanted to say no, didn't want to give Em the satisfaction of having fixed something for her, didn't want to be catered to. But if Gyre tried saying all of that, she'd sound like a petulant child. "Fine. But if anything happens, this relationship gig? I quit."

After breakfast, they got in the back of one of the little automated flyers that were everywhere on Estel Six and were taken to the site where the cave tour was to begin. 

There were more people around than Gyre had expected. A group of young women around the same age as her and Em were talking quietly. Gyre got the impression they were discussing a geology class they took together. There was a sudden burst of laughter from two of the girls, the lighter-skinned one blushing visibly. Their hands clasped together. 

A man and a woman who looked about the age of Gyre's father were asking questions nonstop to anyone around who might answer. "Are there animals in the cave?" "Why is there a cave here?" "Has anyone died in the cave?" the woman asked. Gyre looked at her sharply, but she didn't seem to notice. No one answered the questions.

When the tour began, they followed a gently sloping path down into the cave. Where dips would have been, the locals had abraded the rock floor or placed metal mesh walkways to bridge the gaps too deep to smooth over. In one of the larger rooms, there were crystals glittering in a corner of the cave, lit by a spotlight. The older man asked why those crystals were there. The guide told him the scientific name of the mineral and how long ago the crystals had been found, but the man wasn't satisfied; his voice rose irritably to demand further explanation. 

Growing uncomfortable with the argument, Gyre took a few steps away from the tour group. There was another group on a nearby walkway, a short distance away. They were all wearing some kind of padding, Gyre speculated, their silhouettes looking larger than they ought to. Not just a trick of the light. As she approached them, she got a clearer view. 

The group of big men in bulky protective gear was close enough for eavesdropping. Gyre was curious. One whose hair was grizzled gray was talking. "Alternate route's through here, but it's tight. Could send an automaton, if it wasn't for this up and down bit. We don't have anything rated for that. Spec'd it and it'd take a week to design and build one, they said. Don't think the kid has a week. Got them working on it, though." 

"She might. They could drop food, water bottles. It's not that cold." The younger man sounded confident. There was that edge in his voice, though, that made Gyre suspect he was sounding that way for morale, not because he believed what he was saying.

They were talking about a rescue. The third man, darker-skinned than the other two and with sharper features, had a screen device. A 3-D map projected from it as he turned, visible from some angles but not others, showing a cave route. Gyre got a decent look at it before he'd turned enough that it flickered back into invisibility from her point of view. 

"Let me take a look," Gyre said without thinking. Standing with the tour group, Em must have heard Gyre's voice, because she looked over with half-lidded eyes. Gyre's eyes darted between the group of men and Em. She should be there next to Em, with the tour group. But over here, people were talking about a rescue. There, it was an argument about crystal. 

The three men appraised the interruption, seemed to make a decision about Gyre -- on what basis, Gyre was unsure. "There's no need for concern, cousin," the younger one said, the one who had lied. 

He was still lying, Gyre figured. "You're working out how to rescue a child?" she asked. Out of the corner of her eye, Gyre saw Em separate from the group of people on the tour and start walking toward her. 

"Thank you for your interest, but this is sitzer business." Sitzer. CitSer. Citizen Services. What passed for local government here, instead of corporate security or militia. Put out fires, intervene in fights, save children from falling into sinkholes or ... what had happened to this child, anyway, Gyre suddenly had to know. 

As she stepped up close to Gyre, slipping her hand onto Gyre's forearm, Em said, "We don't need to know."

Of course they did. "Some young person is stuck somewhere in this cave and we're just going to pretend it isn't happening?" Half a question, half a statement, half - there could be a third half - an argument. Okay, more than half an argument. Mostly an argument.

"Citizen Services is taking care of it," Em said, gesturing at the three men.

"Are they?" Gyre turned back to the men. "Are you? What's your plan?"

"We are, and your tour is moving on. You need to go." The older man had the lowest voice, talked like someone who was used to being listened to. He had that knack. Without really planning to, Gyre was letting Em pull her along after the rest of the tour.

Nothing much happened. Not until after the tour was done, having lasted a minute or two past the three hour mark, they'd bought souvenirs in the gift shop, and were in a new restaurant eating some kind of food with sour fluffy bread and very spicy vegetable bits. It was one of the better meals, Gyre thought. "Did you hear about the girl who got stuck down a well last night?" a woman at the next table asked. Gyre couldn't hear her companion's reply.

She'd almost forgotten about the CitSers and the child they were rescuing. 

When she and Em got back to the visitors' center, Gyre pulled up the video news coverage and searched it for the story of the girl and the well. 

The girl, the report said, had climbed down into a well and been unable to climb back up. The rescuers had sent down a camera, lightweight and low resolution, and there were a few minutes leaked from someone at the scene of second-hand view of it, so rough it was almost impossible to make out the shapes, but Gyre could, she was sure. There was the figure stumbling, catching herself on a wall. There was a flurry of something blocking the camera and when it died down, the figure was lying down and there was something on top of her. She looked small, but not a tiny child. A few years younger than Gyre had been when she started caving.

Gyre listened to the commentary. Got tired of listening, skimmed the text updates. Em kept looking at her, didn't say anything, let her get wrapped up in this, knew better than to interrupt. After the camera, the rescuers had sent down a sort of bucket to try to lift the child back up in it, but it kept banging on the sides of the well on its way down, throwing loose debris. One of the larger pieces had trapped the girl's foot, so that when the bucket reached her, she couldn't get free to get in it. Sending a person down that way would knock more debris loose. 

But there was another way in, through the caves Gyre and Em had been touring. Unsafe route for people, according to the news, but a robot was being manufactured that could handle the route when guided by experts. It would be ready in seven days.

"I could do it tomorrow," Gyre said.

"Tomorrow's our last day here," Em pointed out. "You were the one who didn't want to spend her time in caves." But she said it with understanding. 

"Thanks," Gyre said. Thanking her for being willing to go along with it. "Give CitSer a call and explain it for me, would you?" Em was better at that kind of thing. Handling people. Gyre would get too frustrated and yell at them. 

But the ones here weren't as amenable to Em's social maneuvering as Gyre had hoped. "They're not interested in our help," Em said. She let Gyre hear the annoyance she'd kept back from the CitSers on the phone. "We aren't citizens and it's not our concern. They stick to their script, got to give them that." 

"I have every confidence in you," Gyre said, closing her eyes. If she was going to rescue that girl, she needed to sleep.

"At least clean your teeth and take off the prosthetic before you fall asleep," Em said. 

She was right; Gyre would wake up chafed if she slept with the prosthetic attached. And if she was going to remove it, she might as well do the rest of what Em regarded as necessary pre-sleep preparation. Gyre wasn't in the habit of such a ritual, but it did help her wake up more rested, she was willing to admit that much. 

And it had other potential benefits. Their room at the visitors' center had a better shower than any Gyre had seen back ho-- on Cassandra-V. She got luxuriously clean and felt a lassitude in all her muscles that hadn't been there when she was lying down, that promised better, more revitalizing sleep. The better to tackle a rescue tomorrow.

Em's eyes tracked Gyre as she came out of the cubicle and back into their sleeping quarters, as she lay down on the comfortable bed, as she stretched her legs and arm and made a comfortable dent in her pillow for her head. 

As Em stood up from where she'd been sitting, the screens floating around her folded down into the desk, all but the one fixed in place against the wall. That screen began to show a floating series of pastel-shaded bubbles, each moving languorously with a squeeze and push motion as though they were translucent, glowing jellyfish. 

Gyre thought how beautiful Em was, not looking at her at all, only watching the undulating aquas and creams and lavenders of the animation on her screen. She felt rather than saw Em lie down beside her and stroke Gyre's chin, her cheek, down her breastbone to the scars on her abdomen.

Em's fingers slid lower and began to stroke Gyre intimately, soft and warm and getting wetter by the moment. At first it felt good, and Gyre let herself look now at Em's lovely face and its focused expression. How her lips pressed together, hiding the teeth sinking into the inside of her lower lip, how Em's mouth pillowed out into something that couldn't be a pout -- it had nothing of pleading in it, only intensity. 

After not too long, what had begun by feeling good began to feel overwhelming, too much. She could move, of course. Nothing was holding Gyre in place, nothing kept her from pushing Em away, from saying she needed to sleep. Only Gyre liked to pretend there was, when Em touched her like this. To imagine herself immobilized, held steady, unable to pull away. She did want this. She wanted Em's intimate touches, her lovemaking, her attention and warmth. 

It felt good again, so good it made Gyre's eyes close, her back arch, sound catch in the back of her throat that wanted to escape. She imagined her body being moved this way by something not herself, a climax breaking over her in a wave, and then the sensation was far too much again. Gyre went back to pretending she was frozen in place, even her breath held, there was no air, she could hold her breath until she was released. That was how she made it to the second orgasm, almost always. 

Em stopped after that, she'd learned to. She knelt up, offering herself to Gyre with one knee planted next to Gyre's ear, Em's other leg lifted, her foot resting on the far side of Gyre's pillow. Now Gyre could use her good arm to push herself up so she could bury her face between Em's legs, her tongue finding the nub as she'd learned Em liked. This part -- wasn't too different from what Gyre had done before -- not with anyone as rich and pretty as Em, but she knew how to please. 

Gyre almost felt Em's climax in her still-sensitive clit as much as she did with her tongue, there was a slow exhale from her and not much more. Em wasn't noisy. She pulled the coverlet over them both as she slid next to Gyre on the side with her stump, more room on that side after all so it was practical. Em fell asleep before Gyre did. 

At least Gyre thought so. Her breath evened out, but she didn't snore. Gyre had never heard her snore, and sometimes wondered. She wasn't sure she'd slept in the same room with anyone else who never snored.

Trying to remember, she drifted off into a dark place that didn't exist anywhere but in her imagination. There was bulbous, luminescent fungus growing from the walls, the ceiling was vaulted too far above to be seen in the tiny light pool -- her illumination was so poor that she saw the rock under her feet and the fungus and that was all. No, not all. The susurrus of the water lapping against the dark shore was close, and light glittered off the shallow waves, and under them, jellyfish in unnatural shades of green and gold and lavender. A child was crying.

Gyre woke the next morning with no memory of the dream, but there were tears drying on her cheeks. She'd thrown the blanket off and was cold. There was dim light outside, filtered through the window covering so that the sleeping quarters were almost devoid of color, shades of black and dark gray and a cold, leaden umber. 

Em had fixed everything with Citizens' Service while Gyre slept. She handed Gyre a mug of warm sweet tea, then was back to her screens. "They'll have everything ready for you in two hours," she said. "If you still want to do it, now that you've slept on it."

Gyre wondered if she'd rather leave this place and try to forget it, forget the child she might have saved along with every other memory she tried not to think about. No one would have come to save Gyre when she was exploring caves as a child. She had had to be careful for herself. Children here were spoiled -- but Gyre didn't really believe that. Citizens Service was a good thing, that there was someone whose job it was to come to the rescue -- even if they were bad at it. Even if she, a foreigner, a tourist, had to do their jobs for them. "I'm still going to."

"Here's the route." Em pulled up a map of the part of the cave that intersected with the well. She rotated it so Gyre could view the most direct path along which she'd be moving. "The stone in these caves faults along vertical layers," Em said, moving her finger as striations lit up in the animated map, showing the grain of the rock walls. "You'll need to insert anchors when the grain is perpendicular. If it's flat to the wall you're on, the anchors either won't go in or they won't hold if they do." 

As she put on her prosthetic and got dressed in clothing she thought would be suitable as an underlayer for exploration gear, Gyre tried to imagine the ancient movements of stone that would create such layers. There had to have been volcanoes here, long ago, or a series of fault lines that pushed sedimentary rock up into mountains. There were nothing but gentle hills on the surface, so either there'd been massive terraforming work or it was a very long time in the past. She could look that up later, if she wanted to. Right now it was important to focus on the immediate practical information.

"There's no water route or sump. If it wasn't a dry well, the girl probably would have drowned. It's been dry so long the rock is brittle, that's part of the problem. If you hit a wall with your full weight, it might break off, depending on the grain direction." Em frowned. "The narrowest part is going to be very tight. That's why none of their people are going. They're big, broad shouldered men, apparently, all the CitSer caving experts." 

Gyre closed her eyes. Tight spaces, fragile stone surrounding her, inching her way to her goal. A starburst of longing exploded in her chest. Surprise, she wanted this, she had missed it, and there wouldn't be water. There wouldn't be fungus. She wasn't afraid.

She ought to be. It sounded dangerous enough, and Gyre would need a bit of fear to keep her careful. Her habits from Cassandra-V wouldn't all be the right ones in a cave on an entirely different planet. She could be trapped by falling rock, by injury, by carelessness -- which would be worst of all. Gyre didn't say anything. She opened her eyes and looked at Em, watching Em read the determination in her eyes. 

In a tone that was far too conversational, Em said, "You could die."

"The possibility exists."

"That would certainly be an interesting way of quitting." Em looked self-amused, but Gyre could see undercurrents of recrimination, of fear, of, even, betrayal. When had she learned to see so far past Em's facade, or maybe it meant Em wanted her to see. Either way, she had no answer she wanted to give.

The CitSer men took Em and Gyre past the tourists and tour guides into a staff-only entrance into the cave system. An open metalwork lift lowered them creakily but steadily downward to the nearest access point to the area Gyre had seen on Em's map. 

Gyre pulled the insulated jumpsuit on over her clothing. It didn't fit as well as she would have liked, too loose in places and too tight in others. She folded the too-long sleeves in and asked Em to pin them in place. Her finger dexterity with the prosthetic still wasn't quite up to operating safety pins. 

They'd be using Arasgain communications equipment, miniaturized and capable of keeping lines open through anything but inches-thick lead. Gyre put the earpiece into her ear, strapped it around her head to keep it firmly in place. Then the oxygen tank and rebreather with a sensor that would warn her if the air was bad. Apparently there were gas pockets without enough oxygen down there. "You probably won't go through any pockets of asphyxiant," the oldest of the CitSer men said, the lines around his mouth showing he frowned more than he smiled, though he wasn't doing either at the moment. "If you do, the rebreather will turn on and feed you oxygen through the mask. For the most part, it's a simple filter mask." 

There was a basic hard hat to protect her head. It was better than the gear she'd started with in her practicing, but she hadn't been in a cave while this poorly equipped since she'd reached her adult height and could buy gear she wouldn't outgrow. 

This was what there was. This was the task Gyre had set herself. "Guide line and anchors?" One of the men handed her a pouch full of assorted anchors, all similar to types she'd worked with before, but none quite the same. He sorted through them, explaining the use of each, demonstrating on the cave wall in front of them. There were also chemical lights in the pouch, more than a dozen. Twist and they'd light up for five or six hours. Not much illumination, but the low light goggles would enable her to see well enough by their light. No batteries. Gyre felt an obscure sense of relief at not being given anything that required batteries other than the long-lasting ones in the communicator. 

When the CitSers had finished the briefing, Gyre turned to Em. "See you again soon," Em said. As they walked away from the CitSers, Gyre heard Em mutter under her breath, "This equipment is bad." 

"It's the best they had available." Gyre did not need Em undermining her confidence at this exact moment. Em should have known that.

"It's not good enough. We should call it off." 

"We? I'm doing this. If you didn't want me to, you could have arranged that," Gyre said, her voice turning acid with the thought. 

"They assured me of your provision," Em began. Her voice rose. 

"Sabotaged it while I slept. I never would have known," Gyre interrupted, finishing what she'd begun to say.

"Oh, you know, you might not have to quit that girlfriend position. I can fire you." Em's voice sparked with anger, and then it was gone. "Or at this rate, not need to." She looked drained. In the artificial light, Em looked gray enough to be a ghost.

"I have to do this." Gyre couldn't let the girl die, which Em should already know. Couldn't add another regret to the litany. Had confidence in her ability to do this -- Em ought to share that confidence. And it was time to begin. 

Gyre had to squeeze through a narrow opening into a larger cave area whose floor was uneven and where no metal walkways or lifts had been placed. It sloped down to the east into what looked like an enormous pit, while to the west an uneven wall could be walked along, anchoring guide lines as she went. This part might as well be a hike up on this planet's surface and hardly required an experienced caver. 

Soon the floor sloped upward and climbing became more of an effort. The rock grain wasn't any help, as it slanted here, not completely vertical, and when Gyre hammered a piton into its surface the entire layer flaked off instead. That did create a hand-hold, though, and a place she could put her foot. She made her way up it using the piton not as it was intended, but as a wedge, knocking bits out of the slope to keep herself moving upward. When she reached the top, Gyre was able to put in an anchor that would stay in place, keep her guide line safe. Getting back down though, that'd be tricky. Especially carrying a child or, perhaps worse, guiding an inexperienced climber. 

Gyre refocused herself on the here and now, the problem immediately in front of her. There was a slide of rock to the left, and a protrusion of the wall on the right that made a narrow passage. She thought she could get through, but not without scraping against the rock. And there was already rubble on the ground. 

It was a tight fit. Gyre's body made it most of the way through, good arm first, until her prosthesis caught on the outcropping. Something bent. The third through fifth fingers stopped responding. Great, down three fingers and she'd barely got a quarter of the way to the target location. "Em," she said, the first time she'd spoken on the communicator.

"I'm here."

"Minor damage to the prosthesis going through the first bottleneck."

Em asked for status, Gyre gave it. 

Gyre was in the narrow part of the cave now. The low-vision goggles and chemical light together illuminated the walls all around. The ceiling was low, so low in places that Gyre needed to duck down, and there were protrusions that she needed to clamber over as well as steep drops that were almost like stair steps or a stone ladder going down. She'd done all these things dozens if not hundreds of times, and the movements came back to her. 

As the cave around her began to seem familiar, Gyre tried to remind herself to be careful. Relying too much on habit established when she had two arms, when she was in a different sort of stone, when she was, and this time she let herself think it, _home_ \-- could lead to overconfidence. And that was a deadly state of mind in a cave.

A cave where she was alone, no one else on Estel Six both willing and capable of making this trip. If she made a mistake, she would be here alone for at least a day, maybe three days, equipped for a far shorter stay. The darkness surrounding her, the strangeness of the cave's shapes, so different from the ones she'd been exploring since she was a child, the delicate and wavering illumination from the chemical light, it was all so strange and disorienting at that moment.

There was a flicker as something moved on the wall ahead. What was it? There were no animals down here, she had thought. But of course the locals didn't understand caving, they could easily have missed something shy and wary of large movements, of noise. Or not been able to tell the difference between a shadow flickering and a creature's stealthy scuttle across a wall. 

And maybe Gyre was the one who couldn't tell that difference. She'd been doubting herself when she had seen, or thought she'd seen, the movement -- overconfidence was not the only dangerous state of mind. Too much self-doubt was just as bad, and it could lead, had led, to jumping at shadows. A child needed to be rescued. Gyre couldn't indulge herself in fantasy -- she tried not to recall how badly she'd lost her grasp on reality in the cave system called Lethe. 

It was different here. That was both bad, in an objective way because her experience wasn't as reliable, and good, in a more immediate fashion because her surroundings wouldn't set off flashbacks. Even the repetition of the movement she could only see out of the corner of her eye at the edge of the puddle of light from the chemical sources -- she'd broken a second one to get a better look -- would not force her to relive that experience. A very good thing.

Having made her way over and under and around several more obstacles, Gyre found herself in an easier walk through a comfortably hallway-like portion of the cave system. She strode down it, the line behind her spooling out like yarn behind a maze walker. She pressed an anchor into the wall after enough distance had been covered, wrapping the line around the anchor securely. There were no branches, but it was a safety protocol and she felt better for doing it. 

Gyre was growing tired. She was using her own muscles with no assist to climb and lower herself and pull herself through, her one good arm and her own two legs bearing all her weight, she hadn't been caving in months, and she'd been in hospital before that, recovering from major injuries. Recovering, too, from the loss of an arm, from intestinal damage, from psychoactive poisoning. This journey wouldn't have tired her out a year ago, not so badly, she thought. 

But she was getting close. "I have to be getting close," she said aloud, though not especially loudly. It seemed wrong to make too much noise amid such long-unbroken silence. 

"Yes, I think so, it's hard to be sure where you are. The sensors are fuzzing out." It was Em's voice, unexpectedly low quality and tinny on what should have been an ultra-clear communications line. 

"So is your voice." Gyre wondered if she should worry. Maybe there was lead in the rock interfering with transmission. The passage began to narrow as she continued to walk. It was low and one side of the narrowest point was jagged sharp stone, a layer broken off so that it would scrape hard against anyone walking by without enough clearance. And there was not enough clearance for Gyre. 

The CitSers had been right, then. This passage was too narrow for them, and it looked like it might be too narrow for Gyre. She got closer, pressed herself against the opening. 

She could fit through here, but it would hurt. Gyre assessed what part of her body would be best protected from the sharp jagged point she would need to push herself past. Whether she'd be in good enough shape after doing so to make it the rest of the way to the child. The part of her mind considering letting the rock gouge into her was calculating, the rest of her cringing from the prospect. 

But the rock here was so fragile. What if she did something different? Gyre took one of the pitons that had knocked rock loose earlier and tried knocking it into the jagged stone edge.

It worked too well. The rock sheared off, leaving a larger opening, but the arch over top of the gap had loosened as well. Gyre was holding it up with her prosthetic arm, bracing it in place, but she thought as soon as she let go it would collapse. She had to be able to come back this way with the girl. 

The prosthetic arm wouldn't get tired; it could remain there all day, Gyre thought. It was stronger than a real arm, because it wasn't real. Before she could reconsider, Gyre detached the prosthetic and left it holding the stone in place. It slid out from the protective sleeve of her gear and left the rubbery empty arm flopping beside her. 

The sensation of the empty arm was not easy to ignore. As she made her way through the last curves and downward slants of cave to her destination, Gyre thought about the girl. She imagined herself at that age, in a cave, lost and expecting to be rescued, seeing a rescue device come down and having it, instead, knock stone onto her and trap her. And then nothing. 

The camera they'd sent down had stopped working soon after, when more rock fell on it, the news commenters had speculated. The CitSers hadn't been willing to speculate. They said they would risk sending food and water down if Gyre's rescue attempt failed, and they'd send a voice communicator with it, but for now they were not going to take the chance that sending down another bucket would simply knock even more debris onto the pile. 

So the girl was alone, no one talking to her, maybe she could hear someone above shout down? And maybe she couldn't. Gyre wasn't sure how well echoes traveled in this kind of stone. There hadn't been parents interviewed on those news feeds. If the girl had parents, they weren't showing off their grief and pleading for their daughter's life. They were staying quiet. Maybe too upset about what happened. Maybe they didn't really care. 

It wasn't anyone's mother who rescued them, anger pulsing deep in Gyre at the thought. Part of her still felt like it ought to be. Like it was a betrayal if it was anyone else. A betrayal that always happened, that destroyed the world anew for each person when it happened, and made a new, uglier world in its place. 

Where this child would now live, because Gyre had saved her. 

Up ahead, she saw the shape she had seen on that low quality video on the news. No movement. Unlike the last time she'd seen movement, this time she had hoped she would. She made her way with painstaking care to the side of the girl. Now that she was close, she saw signs of life, the girl's chest rising and falling with her breath, the lashes of her closed eyes trembling.

"I'm here," Gyre said aloud.

In her ear, she heard Em's voice. "You found the child?"

"Yes. Can you hear me?" Gyre said the girl's name aloud for the first time. 

The eyes fluttered open. The lips moved, but no sound came out, not even audible breathing. 

The girl was probably dehydrated. There were flat sealed packets of electrolyte drink in a pocket, and Gyre pulled two of them out. She pressed the nozzle of one to the girl's lips, squeezing a few drops into her mouth, while she quickly drained her own. 

"You're real," the girl said faintly. She blinked, tried to sit up and couldn't. "I'm -- where?"

"Down a well." Gyre tried lifting a piece of the rock that had fallen on the girl. It would not take much time to dig her out. But it didn't look like the girl could walk.

Em's voice on the communicator said, "Gyre, they're sending down a line. If you can tie it onto the girl so they can pull her up safely, she won't need to try to make it back the way you came."

Gyre continued carefully removing the debris from the pile that pinned the girl to the cave floor. When she removed one of the last larger pieces of rock, the girl moaned in pain. Her breath got fast. 

She could be going into shock. Gyre gave her more of the electrolyte drink, then broke two of the chemical lights, trying to get it bright enough to see the girl's face clearly. Once she did, she walked around to the other side, where the girl's other leg was, the one that hadn't been stuck under a pile of rocks for hours. Gyre carefully lifted the leg, bent the knee and put the girl's hand on the calf. "Can you hold your leg here?" she asked, not sure if she'd get an answer. "Stay with me a little longer," Gyre pleaded. "They're sending a line down. You'll be out of here and in a medical center very soon." 

It would be close, but Gyre told herself the girl would make it. 

And if she didn't, at least she wouldn't die alone and abandoned in this cave.

When the line came down, Gyre pulled on it, getting more and more until she thought it would be enough. "Make sure they send enough down that it's twice the length it needs to be," she told Em on the communicator. 

Gyre couldn't stand under the well opening while they pulled the girl up. That might bury her in falling rock. But if she had an extra length of line, she could be pulled up after, and she'd know when the girl was out. "They don't have one long enough," Em said finally, when the line stopped feeding down, not nearly the length it would need to be. 

That was all right. Gyre could get back the way she'd come, probably. If her prosthetic had held as a makeshift brace. And if not, she was sure Em would find a way to get to her. No matter what she had said, Em would never, never let her go. Especially not like this.

Gyre made sure the girl was secure, told Em, and soon the girl started up the shaft. Gyre retreated into the cave far enough that she was sure she wouldn't be struck by anything that fell if the girl bumped against it. That was the other problem with not having longer line to pull her up -- Gyre couldn't steady it from below, as she could have with a few anchors if it had been long enough. 

It wasn't, so that was that. For a planet that wanted to save all its citizens, they sure were short of necessary equipment to do so. Gyre complained aloud to Em, who relayed back the status of the rescue -- very little debris was falling, which Gyre could hear for herself, and the girl was halfway up. 

"They're bringing her out," Em said, as her voice was nearly drowned out by a crash of rock falling. 

Gyre swore, then took a deep breath. "That sounded like a lot." 

"They hit a fragile bit of stone near the top," Em said. 

Gyre almost didn't want to look. She could start her way back through the cave now, pick up her prosthetic on the way. It wouldn't be that bad -- a few more hours. But she had thought it was over, and she was tired. She ached everywhere, and it had been difficult when she was fresh. She really had got out of shape. And what if the way back was blocked? A prosthetic made a poor brace for a rock opening. She could get all that way only to realize she was trapped. After another deep breath, Gyre went to see what her fate would be.

The rock had fallen, but it hadn't blocked the well shaft. "I'm clear for you to send the line back down," Gyre said, relief audible. She was so tired, the adrenaline crash was so intense that she thought she might fall asleep waiting. "Count down until I need to go back into the shaft, would you?" 

The numbers slowly descended as the rescue line did the same. On fifty, Gyre drank another of her electrolyte packets and made her way to the well. It was nothing like being rescued from Lethe, and yet, the memories of that came flooding into her mind. 

She had been so close to dying. Ready to die. Em had got Gyre out of Lethe, arranged her care from the damage she'd taken, brought her away from Cassandra-V. Had brought her here to Estel Six and this new disaster, this new chance at redemption. It was so hard to stay awake. Gyre was so very tired.

When she got out, she told herself, she would take a nap and a shower. In that order.

"Do we have time to visit the girl at the medical center before we leave?" Gyre asked Em when she got out of the shower. 

"Plenty of time. Looks like we'll be here six more days."

"We were leaving today, I thought?"

"Can't," Em said. "We have to wait for that robot. They're doing a test run with it, sending it in to fetch your arm."

"You could just buy me a new one. That one's probably a loss anyway. The fingers stopped working even before I used it to brace a rock arch."

Em grinned. "I could," she admitted, "and I probably will, but we're getting that one back. Even if it's only going to be a souvenir."

"You don't need it. Not even as a trophy."

"It's mine, and I'm getting it back." 

"I can't talk you out of it?" Gyre asked.

"No." 

"Good, then there's time to do other things, too."

"Like what?" Em asked. Gyre thought she was genuinely curious. 

How was it that Em hadn't already guessed? "We can meet the girl's family. She still has a family."

"So what?"

"She still has a mother. Her mother still has a daughter." Gyre smiled.

"Good," Em said. "Someone ought to." They were silent for a long moment in perfect sympathy with one another. "I agree, we should meet her."

"Yes, we definitely should." Gyre saw Em grin. She felt an identical smile on her own face. Gyre laced the fingers of her one hand with one of Em's. 

"Yes." She was warm, she was here, she was not letting go. Not being let go. 

And at this rate, she never would be.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Alamorn and Entropy_Empathy for amazing beta assistance and help improving my first draft of this story.


End file.
